Friday, August 22, 2014

A great piece on Pope Benedict and the Latin Mass

In case you missed it, here is a very well-written piece by Michael Brendan Dougherty, "In defense of Pope Benedict and the Latin Mass" (The Week, July 9, 2014). I've probably referred to this before, but it's just too good to have missed and worth revisiting.

2 comments:

Raining on popular parades is my bailiwick but it is a bit confusing to read so many effusive comments about Summorum Pontificum; yes, it was great that the Pope officially exhumed the destroyed rite but his reasons for doing so are less than inspirational:

The Pontiff said it is "groundless" to fear that "Summorum Pontificum" — which opened the way for a wider celebration of the Mass according to the 1962 Missal — is a regression.

"This ‘motu proprio’ is simply an act of tolerance, with a pastoral objective, for people who have been formed in this liturgy, who love it, know it and want to live with this liturgy," he said. "It is a small group, given that it presupposes a formation in Latin, a formation in a certain culture. But it seems to me a normal demand of faith and pastoral concern for a bishop of our Church to have love and tolerance for these people and permit them to live with this liturgy."

"There is no opposition whatsoever between the liturgy renewed by the Second Vatican Council and this liturgy," Benedict XVI continued. "Each day, the Council fathers celebrated Mass according to this old rite and, at the same time, have conceived a natural development for the liturgy in all of this century, since the liturgy is a living reality that develops and that conserves its identity in its development."

"Therefore, there are certainly distinct accents, but a fundamental identity that excludes a contradiction, an opposition between the renewed liturgy and the preceding liturgy," the Pope affirmed. "I think that there is the possibility of mutual enrichment. It’s clear that the renewed liturgy is the ordinary liturgy of our times.

The really important document is Quo Primum. This concerned a matter of Faith i.e., the Mass, the way we express what we believe, addressed to the whole Church, and to be binding "in perpetuity"

Therefore, it is binding, in perpetuity.

Paul VI did not have the authority to suppress the Tridentine Mass and it still is the prime Mass of the Western Catholic Church.

It is not the only Mass of course. The Ordinariate Mass is fully valid, as indeed is the Pauline Mass, properly applied according to the suggestions of Sacrosanctum Concilium. But the Tridentine never could validly have been suppressed and it is still the prime Mass, in its 1962 form, of the Western Church.

Benedict XVI, when he said what generations have held sacred could not suddenly be abolished, or something like that?, was simply being a bit tactful.